ClinVar Genomic variation as it relates to human health

This variant is considered likely benign or benign based on one or more of the following criteria: it is a conservative change, it occurs at a poorly conserved position in the protein, it is predicted to be benign by multiple in silico algorithms, and/or has population frequency not consistent with disease.

Variant summary: COL3A1 c.3654G>T alters a non-conserved nucleotide resulting in a synonymous change. 5/5 computational tools predict no significant impact on normal splicing. However, these predictions have yet to be confirmed by functional studies. The variant allele was found at a frequency of 0.0014 in 277504 control chromosomes in the gnomAD database and publications, including 6 homozygotes. The observed variant frequency is approximately 1100-fold of the estimated maximal expected allele frequency for a pathogenic variant in COL3A1 causing Aortopathy phenotype (1.3e-06), strongly suggesting that the variant is benign. To our knowledge, no occurrence of c.3654G>T in individuals affected with Aortopathy and no experimental evidence demonstrating its impact on protein function have been reported. One clinical diagnostic laboratory has submitted clinical-significance assessments for this variant to ClinVar after 2014 without evidence for independent evaluation and classified the variant as benign. Based on the evidence outlined above, the variant was classified as benign.

This alteration is classified as benign based on a combination of the following: seen in unaffected individuals, population frequency, intact protein function, lack of segregation with disease, co-occurrence, RNA analysis, in silico models, amino acid conservation, lack of disease association in case-control studies, and/or the mechanism of disease or impacted region is inconsistent with a known cause of pathogenicity.

This variant was observed in the ICSL laboratory as part of a predisposition screen in an ostensibly healthy population. It had not been previously curated by ICSL or reported in the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD: prior to June 1st, 2018), and was therefore a candidate for classification through an automated scoring system. Utilizing variant allele frequency, disease prevalence and penetrance estimates, and inheritance mode, an automated score was calculated to assess if this variant is too frequent to cause the disease. Based on the score and internal cut-off values, a variant classified as benign is not then subjected to further curation. The score for this variant resulted in a classification of benign for this disease.